Star Trek Online and Neverwinter MMO devs Cryptic are the next Embracer-owned studio to suffer layoffs

At the end of The Star Beast, David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor is faced with an impossible decision: save millions or save Donna Noble. With the Meep – all hail! – set to launch its master plan, it appeared that the Time Lord would have to make a major sacrifice.

A former member of staff at Rockstar who worked on a raft of Grand Theft Auto games has pulled their behind-the-scenes development blog after someone from the studio got in touch.

If rumour speak true, the next Call of Duty game will be another entry in the Black Ops series. It'll also, allegedly, take place during the first Gulf War across 1990 and 1991, in which a US-led coalition of countries including the UK, Saudi Arabia and Egypt invaded Iraq in response to the Saddam Hussein government's conquest of Kuwait.

It appears the next Subnautica game is diving deep sometime in early 2025. It’s been roughly two years since fans dove into the chilly waters of the series, and it feels like it’s nearly time to strap back into that diving suit once more. And then get eaten by a Reaper Leviathan.

A brand new teaser for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live has dropped, and it looks like this spin-off may hold the key to some of our unanswered questions from the original show’s last few seasons. The teaser also reveals that the show will officially premiere on AMC on February 25, 2024.

Immortals of Aveum was one of the most promising games of 2023, reflected by how they managed to get Electronic Arts as its publisher. However, its financial failure upon release led to its developer, Ascendant Studios, having to play off 45 % of their employees.

Blizzard has revealed the next Diablo Immortal update, Splintered Souls, and with it comes a new story, content, and the introduction of Familiars to the free-to-play title. Players can look forward to the next update soon, as it is set to release sometime in mid-December.

Web3 studio Avalon Corp this week officially revealed its new metaverse-style MMO, Avalon. This game allows users to create their own worlds using the company’s tools, and then share them with others. The new platform is part of the company’s efforts to build an interoperable digital world, for which purpose it raised $14 million earlier this year.

Humble Games, the Humble Bundle-owned label responsible for publishing indie hits including Slay the Spire, Signalis, Unpacking, Temtem and this year’s recently Grammy-nominated RPG musical Stray Gods, have confirmed a number of layoffs.

The failure of Hitman: Absolution meant that when Square Enix chose to divest Project 007 studio IO Interactive, some offers were as low as a single dollar.

After reports circulated by Bloomberg last night, Rockstar Games has officially announced it will be finally showing the first trailer of the next Grand Theft Auto to fans next month. 

Resurrected TimeSplitters developers Free Radical Design could be the next Embracer-owned studio to be shuttered, according to recent reports. The rumoured closure comes just two years after the veteran British label were resurrected by their original founders to work on a new TimeSplitters game.